ST. LOUIS – A graphic design firm has introduced a new punctuation mark intended to denote expressions of sincerity in a similar way to the use of quotation marks to indicate irony. The mark, which is named the Sincericon, has already begun to gain traction on American blogs and Internet news sites.
The firm responsible for the mark is Pretentious/Impertinent, LLC. The firm’s president Skip Willoughby remarked,
Anybody who has read anything in the last 10 years, particularly online, has likely discovered that people are deploying irony and sarcasm so often that it is hard to tell when they’re being serious. The near-ubiquity of quotation marks doesn’t even tell the whole story, because people can’t be relied on to use them consistently.
The new Sincericon is a simple solution to that problem. The only punctuation anybody needs to worry about is in the off-chance that they desire to express something earnestly. But our research shows that happens so seldom anymore, you may go days or weeks without seeing the Sincericon.
